The Eurovision Song Contest: a minute by minute commentary

'Glam', the lead singer of WigWam, Norwegian entry for this year's eurovision, in silver catsuit

Welcome to the first annual Newsblog minute-by-minute commentary of perhaps the most important insipid-pop/ European-peace-and-harmony crossover event of the year. I was here for the whole three and a half hours, guiding you through the good songs, bad songs, crazy outfits, bad songs, Ukranian tourist boosting short films, the whole voting debacle, and hopefully some classic technical hitches too. And the bad songs. Three and a half hours. Yup.

Preamble: And with a fanfare and a sarcastic aural smile from Terry Wogan, the 50th European Song Contest kicks off in Kiev. The BBC has been trailing this all day with "this time it's serious". Good Lord, is it? Oh dear. I was rather hoping it wouldn't be.

So who are our teams? Well, there are 24 of them - 25 if you count Terry Wogan, who seems to be against them all (unless they're particularly scantily clad) - so I think it's probably best if we just meet them as we go along.

Oh crumbs, they've started...

20.04: Well, there appears to be a futuristic cavelady, silver glittering warrior outfit, shining hair blowing in the breeze of adoration coming from the crowd. No kind of introduction for this woman. She didn't win last year, did she? Surely not. That's terrifying. The crowd seem to love her, though, so I'm thinking she might've.

20.08: The young and glamorous hosts are introducing the whole shebang, with a rather shrill style, it must be said. He's shouting, she's shouting, the audience are all shouting right back. The host, wearing what appears to be his dad's best suit, seems to be attempting to pull all the women in the front three rows.

First song coming up... Hungary, apparently ...

20:11: It's Nox, from Hungary, and no wonder Ireland failed to get through the Semi-final - they appear to have had all their tippity-tappity charm nicked by these guys. It's like Riverdance performed by a bunch of East End gang members. All dressed in black, they're skipping about behind a buxom lady wearing not very much. I'm waiting for the first moment where someone whips off their outer layer of clothing to reveal skimpier stuff beneath. Not this woman though. There'd be nowt left.

20.16: Ooooh! It's Javine, with the United Kingdom entry, Touch My Fire. There are many jokes to be made about that title, I fear, but I'm not going to be the one to make them. Not enough time. I'm informed that this is 'death-slot', that no one performing second has ever won.

Unfortunately, I think we can safely assume that that's not the reason we're going to lose, once more. We can probably blame our stance on Iraq. Because that has so much to do with pop music.

Basically, it�s a �wardrobe malfunction� we�ve got to hope for with Javine. I can�t see us getting many points otherwise, unless someone in the UK camp has persuaded Tony Blair to make a guest appearance in the background, dancing about in a monkey costume singing �I was wrong I was wrong, you were right, all along��, before suddenly de-robing into a stunning EU flag-patterned bikini. Oh, god, the mental image. My eyes! My EYES!

Ah, no wardrobe malfunction to be had. That's us being placed in the second half of the table, then...

20.19: And it's Malta, not the whole of Malta, but their substantial ballad, Angel, sung by a substantial lady in a terribly respectable and very modest burgandy dress. It's a stirring song, a very, very big song: heartfelt, gutsy, and instantly forgettable. Will we have the inevitable stripping off of the outer layer to reveal less beneath?

No. Thank god. Let's move on.

20.22: OW! I'm sure some people might be quite keen on the whole style of Romania's attempt, but frankly, my ears are bleeding. There are quite a lot of hearty looking blokes, beating away on large oil drums (and you'd think they might have tried a little harder, it's the European Song Contest after all), backing a little feisty lady with a tenuous grasp on the concept of 'tune'.

20.27: Ah, hurrah for Norway, and long live comedy metal. If WigWam don't win this competition, I'll eat my keyboard. The skintight silver jumpsuit, the constructive use of the orange scarf just to endear themselves to their hosts, I can't see this lot doing badly.

And it's always nice to think you've heard the song before, even if it was in 1986.

20.31: Green and pink, always a bad colour combination. Surely everyone knows that, surely everyone. Everyone, it seems, apart from the Turkish entrants. Pink, green, and as many glittery bits as one person could actually wear without falling through the stage. The song itself? Very Turkish. In a good way. And very Eurovision. In, erm, also a good way.

20.34: It's Red Hot Paprika Pants, otherwise known as Zdob si Zdub, or the Moldovan entry. What is this? Eastern European Ska? Ethno-punk, with added grannies? There really is an old lady sitting on stage, and oh, oh, she's just got up to drum, and they're dancing, the lead singer and the old lady, and just as I was getting in to it, it's gone. 'Let's make love!', the lead singer shouts. I'm hoping that was directed at the crowd, and the enormous TV audience, rather than the old lady. I imagine it was. He looks an energetic chap.

20.39: And a couple of minutes of brain downtime as the Albanian song washes over me without leaving even a single note clinging to my hair. Bland with a capital 'bla'. There's a bit of East, a bit of west, and an awful lot of excitement with not much underneath. And, as if Terry Wogan could read my mind - perhaps he can, who knows? Wouldn't that be scary? - he's just announced that he's finding it difficult to tell the songs apart. He's right. There have only been about 3 completely different songs so far. Still, they keep coming. I think my fingers are going to fall off.

20.43: Constantinos, representing Cyprus, bounces about with a very tight t-shirt, and dancers with quite the biggest hair I've ever, Ever seen. If I'm not mistaken, he was just asking if I'd like to run my hands over his body. Reminds me of a package holiday I took once. Ahem. 'My persistence is outrageous, you'll be mine coz I'm contagious' Heavens. Someone put this man in quarantine.

20.47: Hang on, haven't I heard the Spanish entry before? Haven't I heard it perhaps every year after everyone returns from their Mediterranean holiday and desperately tries to recapture it by buying the cheap piece of euro-tat they made up a group dance to with all their brand new friends? It is! It's The Ketchup song or something, isn't it? Make it go away, will you, Terry? Oh, it has. Terry Wogan. He's magic. Magic Terry.

Erm. Where was I?

20.51: The sweeping ballad that is Israel's entry, and - now I'm not being mean, she really is a beautiful woman - their singer, Shiri Maymon, really looks like nothing if not a mix between Mariah Carey and Elmo from Sesame Street. If Mariah and Elmo had children, it would be, well, a) really big in the tabloids and b) This woman. Very heartfelt performance though. Although I have this wild temptation to see what would happen if someone tickled her. Which they could, quite easily, as her arms seem permanently above her head. Tickle her, someone.

Oh, no joy.

20.55:Serbia and Montenegro have produced undeniably the butchest boyband ever made, apart from all the kicking, and jumping, and skipping about, but apart from that, their incredible leather outfits and fresh-faced smiles make them ... oh, no, they're not that butch after all. They're quite catchy, though. Although, seriously, they're all rolling into one big East/West-combo skippity hoppity mix, now.

My god, we're halfway through! Just when I thought it would all never end. Here we are. There's a big advert going on in Ukraine, apparently. So we get lots of pictures of the build up to the Contest, and I get to shake my hands out, get a glass of water and go to the bathr... no, I don't, they're starting again. Damn.

21.01: Terry Wogan just proclaimed how much he liked Denmark's song. Terry Wogan is either wrong, or crazy. Imagine a mixture of Westlife and the worst soft reggae-pop excesses of Peter Andre. Place that aural slopbucket in the hands of a man with the haunted, sunken eyes of a serial killer, a jaunty beat and several gurning pretty male dancers, and you have Denmark's 2005 Eurovision entry. Needless to say, it'll do well.

21.05: In a big West End musical that has not yet been written, a young good-looking Swedish man with stars in his eyes takes off for the USA to find fame and fortune. Ending up in Las Vegas, he finds sin, and sex, and people living the high life and acting the low lives.

He finds fame, he finds love, the audience get wrapped up with the story - is he going to have it all, or perhaps lose it all? Who knows, maybe then he gets murdered and it all turns into a musical episode of CSI.

Ooh, CSI's on. No, Anna, watch the Eurovision. Anyway, this is the big song of that musical. It's the breakout hit of the sing-a-longa version. I wonder if he's actually been to Las Vegas?

21.10: It was the Federal Republic of Macedonica/Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. There were drums, there was a man, there were pumping drums, tootling flutes, and I didn't listen to it at all. Sorry. Too busy writing the name of the country.

21.12: Ah, it's the home team, completely in their element. Yes, it's Greenjolly, the Ukrainian entry, with not so much a song, more of a chant, and the crowd are going crazy. They were, of course, told to take all the politics out of the song, and duly they did. So, obviously, it still runs 'We won't stand this, no/The revolution is on!'. Not political at all, then. And you can see why the crowd like it so much, apart from the lyrics, it's a jolly little song, rather Limp Bizkitty. What's Ukranian for Bizkit? Limp Dumplink? No, not so good...

21.17: It's Germany, and may I say Rock ON, Deutschland. If you can imagine Tatu, but only one (so Tatone, then), and with added leather, then that's Gracia. Or it was, she's gone now. And I've a feeling we won't be seeing her again. Because it was rubbish.

21.22: As Neil commented below, this does, actually appear to be the European Cleavage contest. Alhtough, frankly, at the moment, it feels like the Eurovision Long Contest. Or, judging by the sheer amount of leather torn clothing and bagpipes, perhaps just the 'European Wrong Contest'. Or, with the emphasis on silver catsuits and male dancers in tight trousers, the European Dong contest. Anyone catching the Ethno-punk with added granny might argue for their winning the European Bong Contest, but I'm going to keep out of that entirely.

Speaking of keeping out of things entirely, I seem to have just missed Boris, from Croatia, who looked a little like a young Chris Rea, and sounded a little like Every Other Song in the damned Contest.

21.29:Russia just sort of happened - beautiful woman, enormous of cleavage, and another song about America, which I find very wierd indeed.

21.26: The Greek entry is, according to Terry, the favourite to win. Why? Granted, there's a pretty lady, and it's quite bouncy, but apart from that, the East meets West thing is getting really a little tired, now, the drums, the flutes, or some kind of pipe, anyway, another blasted fiddler, and there it is, over, before you can say 'Please God, how many more can there possibly BE?'

21.34: Feminnem. Oh for goodness sake. Feminnem, indeed. It's funny, you'd think it was trying to make you think of the popular rap artist, but it sounds like nothing so much as some form of sanitary product to me.

It might be a way to go when they've finished with this contest, actually. 'You can ponce about squeaking as much as you like, and never leak a drop with Feminnem!'

Oh alright, I'm just grumpy. There are three tiny blonde clones skipping about in an upbeat ABBA fashion, while their backing singers, three similarly cloned dowdy brunettes, are relegated about as far off stage as they can get while remaining in Ukraine. Grr.

21.37: Sal's just mentioned in the comments that there was booing at the Russian entry, which is terribly bad form indeed. Bear in mind, of course, that Sal may be the pseudonym of someone sitting here in the office. In which case, Sal, that wasn't the crowd. It was me. Not for any political reason. I just didn�t like it.

Sitting in the office indeed. All around the country, people are out at parties - some fancy dress, no less - getting drunk, and shouting at the telly. Where am I? Sitting in the office. Still, I suppose sitting in a brightly lit office with a nicotine patch is reasonably similar, isn't it?

Ooh, bugger, I'm missing all the songs.

21.43: A quick recap on the songs I missed while my mind wandered - Switzerland: a scary goth lady singing, it seemed, about death and cuckoo clocks. Or death by cuckoo clock. Or something. Alright, I wasn't listening.

At 'The war is not over', the Latvian entry, I could not help, I'm afraid, but sit and stare at the screen, mouth agape.

At one point, I actually thought I was going to be sick, which is quite a reaction. I don't know what it was - the close harmony, the saccharine smiles, the point where they stopped pretending to play guitar and got off their stools in the style of every boy band that's every pretended to stop playing guitar and get off their stools - what ever it was, I really actually did nearly vomit. Eurovision - deeply affecting stuff. Physically.

21.48: And with a slice of fine blandy pie, France finished the whole thing off. Comment of the night to Ade: 'It was good of France to give Fatima Whitbread a shot at singing their song.' I'm laughing so much I can barely hear the round up of all the songs.

Thank you for that so much, Ade. So much. So, so, so much.

21.51: Eduardo asked if they'd be showing the Eurovision in Brazil - unfortunately, I have no idea. I do, however, know that they're streaming it on the official site. As well as, perhaps, the BBC. But I wouldn't know. There's now a long pause, and a LOT OF SHOUTING, while Europe votes/takes a toilet break.

21.58: And oh, there's a big build-up... Is this is? Are we ready to start the scoring? There's a countdown, a lot more SHOUTING, and yes, Yes...

21.58: OH MY GOD! There's a man lying face down in the middle of the stage! Is he dead? Let's see, can we recognise the costume? Please, please can someone tell me that one of the Latvians was wearing this? Oh, no, hang on, he's alive. Oh, he's alive, and he's going to do a little dance. Right. Where's that kettle?

22.05: And with all the lone-dancer faffing about over and done, that crazy futuristic warrior cavelady from the introductory section is back. Or at least, I think it's her. If it is, she was, indeed, the winner of last year's contest. And she's singing a song so catchy, I am, shamefully, actually dancing at my desk. That'll be the paracetamol kicking in, then. Oooh! Results!

22.08: As Pete has commented, the foxy female presenter has one of those shiny chests. Why on earth do people DO that? It looks like they've rubbed used chip paper all over, as opposed to the more traditional towel.

Ah, Austria are voting now, the second country to return, after the first one, which I didn't hear. Oh, no, they're the first country to return. I should probably start paying attention for a second. And top vote goes to - Serbia and Montenegro. What did they do, again?

22.13: Several countries in, and Moldova, I have to say, with their fancy ethno-punk trousers and their old lady in a rocking chair, are doing awfully, awfully well. Let's make love!

22.16: And the celebrity 'judge' from Belarus should get a few points herself. Because it takes a lot of time to scrunch up that much pink toilet paper and staple it to your chest. My God! Belarus have awarded 12 points to Russia! It's incredible, who'd have thought it! Etc! And yes, Sal earlier was right, there is a huge amount of booing from the crowd. Well, that's just not cricket.

Well, no, obviously it's not cricket. It's the Eurovision Song Contest. Sorry, should have thought that one through.

22.20: Iceland give twelve points to Norway! Another non-shock shocker, but it's nice to see the boys in spandex getting some, isn't it. Oh dear. I'm having another one of those 'mental image' problems. My eyes!

22.24: And oh, will you look at that, the UK still has absolutely no points. None. Nil. Nul. Nada. I mean come on, it wasn't THAT bad, was it? That name, though. Touch My Fire. So many jokes there. So many. *Sigh*. But really, it was bouncy, it was bland, hell, they should be all over it. Latvia! Latvia's almost winning. My god, I may actually be sick if they play that song again...

Don't worry though, if I do, I'll minute-by-minute it. Every bit.

22.29: Oooh, Ireland - Ireland have got to give us something...

22.30: Hurrah! Let's hear it for the poplutation of Ireland. A whole EIGHT shiny points for the United Kingdom! We could still go on to win this, you know...

22.32: So let's face it. Everyone votes for their friends. We have no friends. The United Kingdom - Billy-no-mates of the blandpop world. Well feh - who needs friends? And who wants to be their friend anyway? I'm happy to sit here in the corner and play with my imaginary friend George.

22.36: And here's Cheryl Baker with the UK return - only five points for Norway? What, really? With our affection for Cod-cock-rock, I'd have expected much higher. I think I may have said earlier that if WigWam didn't win, I was going to eat my keyboard. I'm sort of regretting that now.

22.39: You know, even though he's at a huge event, in a cavernous arena, with an ecstatic crowd, Terry Wogan still sounds like he's tucked up in his leather armchair in front of a roaring fire, puffing away on his pipe, snug as a bug in a rug.

Sorry, that wasn�t 'rug' as a euphemism for wig, just in case you're reading, Terry. You're doing a great job. No aspersions on wigs here. Apart from that Norwegian judge. If that's her real hair, I'll eat my ... no, hang on, already eating the keyboard. Erm... Desk?

22.46: Interesting and incredibly insightful comment from Neil: 'Norway only give the Swedes one point. Apparently the Swedish media criticised the Norwegians for not taking the whole thing seriously. Ah, but they give Denmark 12 points!'

Scandal, excitement! We love it!

I bet everyone watching this is drunk but me, you know. (Sigh).

22.48: I was about to write something about Moldova voting highly for all on their borders, but really, what's the point? Thirteen points, we have.

Still, we're whupping France. If you count 7 points as 'whupping'. Oooh, Cyprus just gave us more points! Now we're whupping France.

22.51: And Cyprus gives 12 points to ...? Anyone? Anyone?

No! It was Greece! Well, knock me down with a wafer thin slice of halloumi cheese...

22.53: Well, the cleaners will be pleased at least, Latvia's sugar syrup looks like it's slipping out of the running. Which will save me from sicking everywhere. It really was awful. *Shakes head*. Awful.

22.56: And with the voting from Serbia and Montenegro, it looks as if Greece are untouchable. Which is funny, because I thought they were merely unmemorable.

22.59: Tosh has just commented that he 'always thought Britain missed a trick not sending the Happy Mondays to Eurovision back in the early 1990s. That would have shaken things up a bit.

I'm now trying to think who we should send now. Dizzee Rascal? No, too obvious. What about Babyshambles?

23.01: Ooooh! Technical hitch! Something's gone wrong with the Ukranian voting! No! This is too good! They're having to do a recount!

23.03: No, it all worked out in the end, and everything seems sorted. They had to restart the return three times, but it turned out fine in the end. I was imagining weeks of protests culminating in a second Eurovision Song Contest. I don't think I could have taken it, personally. I'd rather be poisoned.

23.07: Heavens above, are we not done with the voting yet? Ah, well now it's Greece. At least they can't vote for themselves. I'm guessing Cyprus will be getting a fair bit of love, mind...

23.08: Yes, they did. Isn't it about time they just started awarding those really obvious points automatically? No, hang on, that would leave us with nothing. Hm.

23.10: The crowd settles into a grumpy hush at the appearance of the Russian judge. The Russians award Ukraine 2 points. The Russian judge, meanwhile, looks like my secondary school geography teacher. i don't know the significance of that, international politics-wise.

Pixeldiva has just commented asking if she's the only one who's lost the will to live. She isn't.

23.13: And so it goes on. There is absolutely no way that Greece can lose. I'm incredibly curious, now, to find out what their song sounded like, as it's fallen from my mind like something slippery from something else (perhaps from something like a shovel).

23.16: And, finally - and I do mean finally, this voting has gone on for what seems like 400 years - we've reached the last country to return. And, as was predictable for at least the last 20 minutes, Greece has won. Well done Greece.

23.19: The Greek representatives come on stage, tears, glitter, it's all happening. Almost enough to bring you to tears. Emphasis on the �almost�.

And, before this long night ends, and someone gives me a beer, let's hear this Europe-beating, magnificently popular Greek song, then.

23.23: Big drums, a little bit of traditional dancing, a hopeless dedication to the 'Rhyming for Idiots' handbook, a catchy beat, a sexy female singer - yes it's the Eurovision winning song in all its glory. And it's really, really bad.